Travel editor: My best trips of 2012

I love Paris, Rome and Berlin, but this year I passed on the usual suspects and opted instead for Istanbul, Athens and Moscow.

My overriding theme this year was "what's new for me."

New places or new spots in old places. I went to four new countries: Greece, Turkey, Ukraine and Bulgaria. In Portland, Ore., I stayed in a new neighborhood (Nob Hill), and on visits to London and Washington, D.C., I opted for new discoveries instead of old favorites, which resulted in sleeping in a converted train station in one and decamping across the Potomac in another.

I was nice to people whether they were grumpy (Moscow), thought I was invisible (New York City) or greeted me with depressed carping about unending rain (London, Honolulu and just about everywhere in Oregon). I paid less than $3 a gallon for gasoline in Houston and nearly $6 a gallon in Lanai. I went on the newest airliner in the world, the Boeing 787, but also drove a mud-splattered Jeep with 75,000 very hard miles, doors that jammed, a sand-stuffed CD player and brakes that earned it the nickname "Squeaky" throughout my trip.

I bought a bronzed fig leaf to symbolize making peace with traffic in Los Angeles, rental car taxes, cold room service food, airline fuel surcharges, TSA agents going on break during long lines, and the uniquely Soviet-style bureaucracy of applying for a Russian visa (name every country you have visited in the past 10 years, with the dates of the visits and the reason).

So Santa, all I ask for Christmas is that my travels in 2013 be a lot like these from 2012:

Most beautiful place: Santorini, Greece. Yes, it is overrun with tourists every day. Yes, the famous bay created by an ancient volcano imploding fills up with bulbous cruise ships. True, there's hardly a shop that doesn't cater to tourists. But some places are on the beaten path for a reason. Santorini, with its white houses, steep black cliffs, blue-domed orthodox churches – all above a deep electric blue sea – cannot be ruined. It is eternally sublime.

Favorite foreign city: Istanbul. It's hard for me to believe that it took me so long to visit the city that along with Rome and Jerusalem so effortlessly shows the passing of the ages. I was especially entranced by the Hagia Sophia, the great Christian cathedral that was converted into a mosque when the city fell to the Turks, ending the last vestiges of the Roman Empire. I arrived and left by sea, through the Dardanelles and the Bosporus, the narrow channels where so many trying to capture the city met defeat.

Favorite U.S. city: Alexandria, Va. From the French and Indian Wars to Robert E. Lee to the Doors' Jim Morrison's childhood, every foot of old town Alexandria has a story to tell. Plus the Federalist period buildings are filled with great restaurants and coffeehouses. I only stayed there early this summer because of the ludicrous prices at D.C. hotels across the Potomac. Now I think I would prefer to stay there and use the easy subway connections into the capital.

Favorite tourist trap: Lenin's Tomb, Moscow. The great revolutionary still lurks, rubbery and pink, inside his huge mausoleum on Red Square. Admission is free, though everyone has to keep moving as they pass by the stern visage of a man who died 90 years ago. We beat the Soviets to the moon, but they won the Embalming Race. Russians are debating whether to keep Lenin in his place or bury the past with the man.

Favorite souvenir: Evil-eye charms, Greece and Turkey. Discs, usually ceramic, that look like a blue eye, meant to ward off evil spirits. Regardless of whether it was a Christian or Muslim country, the charms were there. They hung on bus drivers' rear-view mirrors, in restaurant doorways and on baby strollers. Sizes ranging from manhole cover to key-chain bob were on sale.

Favorite people-watching: Saturday in Odessa, Ukraine. In a perfect world, every day of a travel trip would be a Saturday. Odessa's main park was full of families on late summer walks or saddling their toddlers up on miniature ponies for a walk around the gardens. War veterans met for coffee atop the famous Potemkin Steps above the harbor, and a woman was trying very hard to look like Paris Hilton – right down to the pink outfit and small Chihuahua. But the kicker was that on every corner, there seemed to be brides, brides, brides. Some were actually getting married, others posing with their husbands-to-be or solo at the opera house, war memorial or other spots. Times are tough in Ukraine, but on Saturday there is still time for love, family and fun.

Favorite foreign hotel: Renaissance St. Pancras, London. I've been waiting for this grand, Gothic, 1880s rail hotel to be resurrected. The long-delayed plans finally became reality last year when the former Great Western Hotel reopened after a half century of decay and near-demolition. The red and white turrets and clock towers are a throwback to a muscular era when Britain ruled the world and the trains ruled Britain.

Favorite U.S. hotel: Magnolia Hotel, Houston. The fact that the hotel is the former headquarters of the Houston Post newspaper would be enough to get me in the doors, but once inside I found a sleek boutique hotel within walking distance to both Minute Maid Park, the home of the Houston Astros, and the arts district with its Italian coffeehouses, "buy local" produce markets and concert halls.

Favorite "comfy-cozy" lodging: Alpine Village Cabins, Jasper, CanadaAlberta. I drove from Calgary to Jasper and stayed at two of the great old railway hotels, the Banff Springs Hotel and the Chateau Lake Louise, both now run by Fairmont. But my favorite stop was this ultralow key resort of blond wood log cabins just outside of town. The collection ranges from rustic and inexpensive to luxuriously modern. I picked a midpriced one-bedroom amid the pine trees with a fireplace and kitchen. While the two Fairmont hotels were grand, the cabin was the kind of cozy, warm mountain experience I was really looking for in the Canadian Rockies.

Favorite inexpensive foreign hotel: Bungalows, Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. I visited the Mexican resort at the tip of Baja California for the first time and tried the "Goldilocks" approach of three kinds of stays. The Westin in the tourist zone was luxurious and had a great beach, but it was too far from the action in Los Cabos. The Casa Dorada was right smack in the middle of Medano Beach with its all-day, all-night partying – too close for me. The "just right" combination was at Bungalows, a B&B in the hills above town that was relatively inexpensive, beautifully maintained, quiet at night and yet within relatively easy walking or driving distance to the "Cabo Wabo" tequila Jell-O shots scene or the boats out to Los Arcos for an escape to the beach.

Favorite inexpensive U.S. hotel: Hotel Lanai, Lanai, Hawaii. I like Waikiki, but nothing is more head-spinning than going from the cacophony of Kalakaua Avenue one day to the silence of the Garden of the Gods in Lanai the next. The slo-mo feel of the "Pineapple Island" is best captured at the small Hotel Lanai at the top of Dole Park. The two Four Seasons resorts are islands on the island.

Favorite airport hotel: Springhill Suites, Houston. I've stayed at scores of airport hotels and most are utilitarian pit stops on the way in or out of town. Many have nice touches like free breakfast and working stations with lots of electrical sockets in the rooms. But few combine that with the genuinely fun and warm welcome that you get at Springhill Suites. I've seen plenty of fake friendliness on the road, but this place serves genuine Southern hospitality in what's usually a sterile environment.

Favorite meal: Room service Thanksgiving, Heathman Hotel, Portland. Our family tradition is to travel on Thanksgiving – it's the holiday when my wife and I met and now we take along our two children. A slip-up in planning (Hmmm. Wonder who that could be? Mirror, mirror ... ) had us booked into the Heathman Hotel but without reservations to its sold-out buffet and dining room Thanksgiving dinners. No worries – the Heathman arranged to bring Thanksgiving to us, rolling up to our room with turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie and all the trimmings. It shows what a great hotel can do to turn a potential disaster into a memorable feast – and save Dad/Husband's skin in the deal.

Favorite takeout food moment: Grizzly bears in Jasper. I wanted some company for my trip from our rental cabin outside of Jasper into town to pick up a takeout pizza for dinner. But my wife, son and daughter were all too tired or entranced by their books or smartphones to come along. So I embarked on my own, picked up the pizza and was on my way back when a massive grizzly bear with two cubs ran across the road in front of me, up an embankment and into the woods. Two park wardens followed, firing darts from rifles in hopes of knocking the bears out so they could be taken away from the town where they were foraging for food in the garbage. I had to honk my horn and wave out the window to prevent an 18-wheeler from plowing into the middle of the scene. When I returned with pizza and my bear tale, everyone was sorry they hadn't traded their screens for a bit of impromptu natural drama.

Favorite pool: Hyatt Maui, Kaanapali, Hawaii. I have never been a big fan of the 1980s hotels that went up around Hawaii, particularly in Maui and the Big Island. They tried to be the equivalent of Disneyesque water parks. When I did my first survey of the best swimming pools in Hawaii about 10 years ago, I skipped right over the Hyatt on purpose. But during an impromptu visit to the "doc-in-a-box" drop-in medical center to clear out my son's waterlogged ear a few years back, we had to kill time and enjoyed walking around the bridges and tunnels, past the flamingos and the kids playing basketball in the pool. We gave in to the allure of the waterfalls hiding a swim-through grotto with its mid-grotto secret bar, the cool waterslides and the swinging bridge. I surrender. Over the top can sometimes be fun.

Favorite travel movie: "Skyfall." I've often been immune to the more prosaically photographed locations that are thrown in as eye candy in the half century of James Bond films. But "Skyfall" director Sam Mendes had a way with the many worlds 007 raced through. The movie had me saying, "I want to go there ... or there ... or there ... " from start to finish. The bazaar in Istanbul (which I visited this year for the first time), Shanghai's skyscrapers, Macau (the Las Vegas of Asia), the moors and rolling treeless hills of the Scottish Highlands, right up to the final scene with a triumphant Bond standing on a London rooftop, looking out across the cityscape with a half dozen or so Union Jacks flapping in the breeze.

Favorite fight: LAX to Houston on 787. United briefly operated the next big thing in commercial flights from Los Angeles to Houston. I grabbed a ticket and enjoyed the big windows, high ceilings, bigger carry-on bag bins and seatback screens. It's not the revolution of Boeing's canceled Sonic Cruiser program, but it's a nice upgrade from the cramped, old 757s on so many routes today.

Favorite new route: SNA Orange County to Cabo on AirTran. Fly two hours south to the West Coast's most popular Mexican resort without first making a two-hour trip north to Los Angeles International Airport. This simple piece of vacation math has proved so popular that AirTran is adding a second flight. Interjet, the Mexican carrier that launched service from John Wayne Airport to Guadalajara and Mexico City, also has permission to fly to Cabo but has yet to schedule flights. It's possible that Orange County could have three daily flights during peak periods to Cabo.

Favorite drive: Icefields Parkway, Alberta, Canada. The titanic geological forces that shaped North America are on display along this drive between Banff and Jasper, Alberta. The carving and flooding are seen at Lake Louise, Moraine Lake and the Vermilion Lakes with their green-tinged glacier water. The massive amounts of ice melt that fuel the thundering Athabasca and Sunwapta Falls, and the up-and-over folding of land that creates the mountains that flank the road. All around are mountain goats and bighorn sheep, plus the regular "bear jams" when cars stop to watch black bears eat berries by the roadside or a rare grizzly making its way across a mud flat. The star of the trip is riding the special tractors out on the Columbia Icefield to experience a last remnant of the great glaciers that once covered most of North America. Bring an empty cup along to drink water directly from the glacier lip.

Favorite coffee spot: Street 14 Coffee, Astoria, Oregon. During an especially wet week in Oregon, I stopped three times at Street 14 Coffee. At first I was lured by the huge, neon orange "Coffee Shop" sign that hangs behind the counter. But I came back for the beautifully drawn espressos, made from Stumptown Coffee Roasters beans – one of my favorite spots in Portland. Owners Jennifer and Micha Cameron-Lattek moved from Berlin to help caffeinate the ongoing renaissance of Astoria.

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